The Future of Customer Self-Service

What customers want from self-service has changed. Are your self-service experiences living up to customer expectations?

The future of self-service. What does it hold? Today’s customers expect online self-service to provide relevant answers, personalized responses, and easy escalation. Unfortunately, most self-service experiences leave customers feeling frustrated and lost. High customer expectations mean the future of self-service is right now. Advanced knowledge management systems use natural language processing to understand the intent behind a customer’s question, providing the most relevant answer.

Let’s look at these two questions: they are only one word different from each other, but with a totally different meaning.
This customer wants to know where she can buy the coffee beans you use at your coffee shop. Inferring that she is interested in buying a product, the system presents her with the Product Locator. But then another customer asks, where do you buy your coffee beans. Understanding that he wants to know where you source your coffee beans, the system shows him information about your coffee growers and fair trade. Self-service software can understand their intent and provide the best answer.

Customers also want personalized responses and offers. Using AI technology, Astute Solutions combines behavior and identity data to understand the customer’s needs. When this customer searches for a coupon while logged in, the system can see that she is a platinum level loyalty customer, and automatically offers her 25% off her order. Back-end profiling analyzes customer questions and sentiment to prompt the right offer and improve conversion.

Lastly, customers want escalation to be easy. The right software understands when customers need to talk to someone, and makes the transition painless. When this customer needs help, she can simply click to talk to a travel expert via chat, voice, or video. She can get her questions answered quickly and effectively, increasing her loyalty and lifetime value.

When self-service provides relevant answers, personalized responses, and easy escalation, it makes customers happy! With customer expectations at an all-time high, the future of self-service is now. Are you ready?

Astute’s knowledge management and self-service software uses a patented form of NLP to interpret questions and provide more accurate responses, acting more like a concierge than the yellow pages. When asked a question, Astute’s self-service uses all the information available to it to provide “the one right answer,” one that’s accurate, personalized, device-optimized, and in the customer’s native language.

The self-service application can be implemented on a company’s website, embedded within their mobile app, or accessed through third-party messaging applications such as Facebook Messenger. Users of Astute Knowledge benefit from a more streamlined authoring process because they don’t have to build a new knowledgebase from scratch. Our KMS is able to generate knowledgebase content and pull answers from existing sources such as internal databases and business systems, FAQ pages, and approved external sources.

Learn more about how Astute Solutions can create outstanding self-service experiences for your customers. Request a demo of our software.